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Boko Haram fighters have killed 32 people and kidnapped scores of others in an attack on the village of Gumsuri in the restive north-east, local officials and a witness said, while neighbouring Cameroon has said that its troops have killed 116 Nigerian Boko Haram fighters in its far north region.

The Nigerian officials, who requested anonymity, said locals were still counting those abducted in the attack on Sunday in the remote, isolated area in Borno state, but that the figure could pass 100 and included women and children.

“After killing our youths, the fighters have taken away our wives and daughters,” Mukhtar Buba said yesterday, after fleeing Gumsuri to the Borno state capital Maiduguri.

Details took four days to emerge because the mobile phone network has largely collapsed in the area roughly 70km south of Maiduguri, and many of the roads are impassable.

Gamsuri is located on the road that leads to Chibok, where Boko Haram abducted more than 200 girls from a school in April.

Meanwhile in Cameroon the fighters attacked an army base in Amchide on the border with Nigeria on Wednesday, but soldiers repelled them, inflicting heavy losses, the Cameroon defence ministry said

“A column made up of a military truck and four pick-ups from the BIR (elite Rapid Intervention Battalion) were caught in an ambush that began with an explosion of a roadside bomb,” the army said.

“There are 116 of the assailants dead on Cameroonian territory and undetermined casualties on the Nigerian territory from our artillery fire,” the statement said.

“There is one dead on the Cameroonian side and one officer missing.”

According to the army, the Boko Haram fighters destroyed a pick-up and a troop truck, as well as managing to capture another military truck.

Boko Haram has grown in power in the area, where Cameroon and Nigeria are linked by a bridge.

One of the local Nigerian officials said the Gumsuri had previously been protected against Boko Haram violence by a strong vigilante force, but that they were overpowered in Sunday’s attack.

“For the past one year, the fighters have made   several attempts to attack Gumsuri but were resisted by the gallant youths of the village,” he told AFP news agency.

“It is sad that on Sunday, the village was subdued,” he added.

The military and police were not immediately available for comment.

Boko Haram has repeatedly attacked the vigilante forces which have formed across the northeast, describing them as legitimate targets for siding with Nigeria’s military.

The other local official said the insurgents “stormed the village in a convoy of vehicles armed with petrol bombs” and heavy weapons.
Buba, the resident, said more than half the village had been destroyed.

“The terrorists mercilessly attacked us and killed at will,” he said.

Borno is the epicentre of Boko Haram’s five-year uprising aimed at creating a strict Islamic state in northern Nigeria.

On Wednesday a Nigerian military court sentenced 54 soldiers to death for mutiny after they refused to deploy for an operation against Boko Haram in the northeast, their lawyer said.

Speaking from Abuja, Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris said that the reaction is that of outrage.

He said that the feeling is that the authorities have not adequately equipped the soldiers in the north east if the country.

“There are military offices who comment off-record saying that the equipment is archaic and they are understaffed. There are others that complain that Boko Haram are more motivated and better equipped than the army.”

Many areas remain under control of Boko Haram, he added. – AFP